WHY ARE LEVIES CHARGED ON SAFARI?

We break down why conservation, community and park fees are so important and where your contributions go.

Explore the highlights of this post with ease by using the table of contents below to navigate to sections of interest.

A crucial part of the costs that make up a safari are levies. We recognize that they are an important factor in what makes safaris possible – read on to see what they cover and how you are actively contributing to conservation and development across East and Southern Africa.

‘Levies’ are generally comprised of three fees, depending on where you are travelling. These are:

1. Park fees
2. Conservation levies
3. Community levies

Each is earmarked for a different aspect of your journey and goes a long way to ensuring safety, comfort, equity and that you have wildlife to enjoy.

Park fees are decided by the custodians of the national park (such as a government department of the environment or tourism) or owners of a private reserve. This is essentially an ‘entrance fee’ that goes towards maintaining the park or reserve.

These fees generally go towards significant expenses such as:

• Paying, housing, clothing and feeding park staff who are far from home
• Developing infrastructure such as ablutions, bridges, waterholes and telecoms towers
• Grading roads and airstrips
• Repairing pipes and water tanks
• Keeping pumps and solar panels running

There is a huge behind-the-scenes or ‘back of house’ operation behind every park or reserve. These are massive areas where a herd of elephants can rip up water tanks in minutes or rain can wash away a dirt road in seconds. Park fees go to creating and maintaining the infrastructure that make game drives possible in the first place.

Parks and reserves cannot be maintained by taxpayers or citizens alone. Many are in countries with very small tax bases because of high unemployment (such as South Africa), low populations (both Botswana and Namibia have only around three million citizens each), very young populations (such as Zambia) or are recovering from decades of social and political upheaval, coupled with drought (such as Zimbabwe). Extra funds must be raised to care for parks.

In the case of private reserves, owners still have to provide roads, bridges, sewage, dams and so on without state assistance so ‘park fees’ are levied to help cover those significant costs.

Conservation levies are another crucial income stream to cover the high expenses connected to preserving and securing wildlife. Africa’s animals are under threat from all directions: the illegal wildlife trade, poaching, urbanization and manmade climate change. Conservation levies go a long way to mitigating the dangers they face from human society. Again, there is a sizable operation that many visitors don’t realize is running 24/7/365.

Your conservation levy is generally used on projects such as:

• Anti-poaching units (salaries, importing highly training sniffer dogs, helicopters, weapons, vehicles, intelligence centres, fuel, binoculars, boots and so on)
• Habitat restoration (reforestation, removal of alien plant species and converting former agricultural land back to nature)
• Wildlife monitoring and tracking (often early warning to villagers that lions or elephants are heading their way – this reduces human-wildlife conflict)
• Research (into vulnerable species, animal behaviour, migration patterns and even disease outbreaks)
• Veterinary bills (although a ‘let nature take its course’ approach is widely adopted, vets do sometimes get involved to minimize intense suffering)
• Rescue (for example, desnaring animals)

Community levies were born out of the realization that people are the cornerstone of conservation and safaris. It is impossible (and immoral) to run a successful park or reserve without surrounding villagers seeing the benefit of the operation.

Nowadays, there is thankfully much more consultation, understanding and co-operation between communities, park officials and conservationists. Communities may choose to lease their land to safari operators or allow conservation work in exchange for financial support. Once people see the benefit themselves, human-wildlife conflict falls and many become active guardians of the environment or animals. This is particularly true of the conservancy system pioneered in East Africa, community land leases in Botswana and even former poachers becoming outstanding ‘gorilla guardians’ in Rwanda.

Your community levy could have a deep impact on support for important goals like:

• Rural clinics and mobile vaccination centres
• Primary and secondary schooling
• Sports facilities
• Job creation centres especially for rural women
• Infrastructure like wells and solar panels
• Early childhood development centres
• Community vegetable gardens

Community levies also often support projects around domestic violence, HIV prevention, period poverty, provision of eye and dental care, and adult literacy. If people are healthy, educated and employable, they are more likely not to fall prey to poaching syndicates or wildlife traffickers. Crime thrives in poverty and lack of hope – the positive impact of community levies cannot be understated.

We understand that safaris can be a significant financial outlay for many travellers. Levies and park fees make up a small portion of that cost and yet have positive ripple effects that last for years and belie their relatively minor amounts. These fees are mandatory and agents and lodges have no say or control over how they are determined or charged. Without them, modern safaris would not exist and parks and reserves would fall into disrepair. Much of that is prevented by the hundreds of thousands of safari lovers who each contribute individually towards the substantial costs of keeping wildlife safe, healthy and thriving – as nature intended.

Much of that is prevented by the hundreds of thousands of safari lovers who each contribute individually towards the substantial costs of keeping wildlife safe, healthy and thriving – as nature intended.

PHOTO CREDITS Conservation South Luangwa, Angela Aschmann and Project Luangwa